First Published: The Call, Vol. 4, No. 6, March 1976.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
Copyright: This work is in the Public Domain under the Creative Commons Common Deed. You can freely copy, distribute and display this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit the Encyclopedia of Anti-Revisionism On-Line as your source, include the url to this work, and note any of the transcribers, editors & proofreaders above.
International Women’s Day activities will take place across -the country the weekend of March 6-7. The focal point, this year like last year, will be New York City, where the October League has joined with other anti-imperialist forces to build a March 7 demonstration at the United Nations.
The main demands of the New York demonstration will be:
FULL EQUALITY FOR WOMEN!
DOWN WITH IMPERIALISM!
SUPPORT THE STRUGGLES OF THE THIRD WORLD PEOPLES!
END SUPERPOWER WAR PREPARATIONS!
All who agree with these demands are welcome to participate in this event.
As of this writing, more than a dozen organizations have joined in. A number of the speakers, including the representative of the October League, will expose the role of both superpowers, the U.S. and the USSR, as the main oppressors of women and other people all over the world.
This year’s Women’s Day events, as in the past, raise the crucial question: who are the friends and who are the enemies of women-particularly working class and oppressed national minority women in the struggle for equality and freedom?
Last year the revisionists of the “Communist” Party, U.S.A., created a stir when they suddenly, for the first time in decades, called for a demonstration on Women’s Day and posed as friends of the women’s struggle.
The actual conduct of the revisionist party showed clearly that they are not interested in fighting for women’s equality: Their only aim is getting a foothold in the women’s movement and twisting it toward support for Soviet social-imperialist aggression around the world, and for dead-end reformism here at home.
Not by coincidence the revisionists last year counterposed their demonstration to the anti-imperialist Women’s Day march initiated by the October League. The revisionists’ action was nothing more than an attempt to divert the movement of women from the anti-imperialist path.
Last year a number of centrist forces such as the Guardian newspaper, joined by Workers’ Viewpoint Organization, jumped in with the revisionist-led demonstration at Union Square and refused to take part in the anti-imperialist march at the UN. The main reason they gave at that time is that “the masses“ would be at the revisionist-led demonstration.
This year events have taken an unexpected turn, exposing the centrists and revisionists even more clearly. In mid-February, after long internal squabbling and wrangling, the revisionist-led coalition suddenly broke up when the revisionist party withdrew. Instead of a march, the revisionists will retreat indoors to hold a film show. With the revisionist party back to its normal neglect of International Women’s Day, the road would seem clear for the centrist forces to join the anti-imperialist demonstration at the UN. At least, last year’s argument about going with “the masses” to the revisionist-led march won’t do. There isn’t a revisionist march. So why not unite in the anti-imperialist action?
It seems natural, but that isn’t how the centrist leaders reason. Instead of joining with the anti-imperialists they are setting up a separate, splittist demonstration of their own, just as the revisionists did last year. They are following in the revisionists’ footsteps exactly.
What’s the reason? It isn’t hard to see. It’s the fact that at the anti-imperialist rally there will be speakers who will expose and denounce the role of Soviet social-imperialism as an enemy of the world’s people-particularly the third world people – on a par with U.S. imperialism itself; who will argue forcefully and persuasively that to stand in solidarity with the people of the third world fighting for liberation and independence means to oppose both imperialist superpowers, not just the U.S. Speakers will show, moreover, that the oppression of women in the USSR gives that superpower no more right than U.S. imperialism to pose as a friend of the struggle for women’s rights and all people’s freedom.
The centrist leaders want to shield their followers from this consistent anti-imperialist message. But the only ones they are shielding are the Soviet social-imperialists and the revisionist party.
The struggle for the emancipation of women cannot be separated from the overall struggle against the principal enemies of the world’s people, the two superpowers who head up the imperialist system. We call on all who are concerned with the liberation of women and of all other oppressed and exploited people, to join the anti-imperialist Women’s Day demonstration at the United Nations March 7.